![]() ![]() Our lungs are fractal structures, which is why they can have a total surface area comparable to a tennis court. The mountain has the same shape as its boulders, rocks, and sand. River networks have fractal properties, as do ice crystals, lightning bolts, fern leaves, clouds, coastlines, nautilus shells, and spiral galaxies. The branching shape of a tree is mirrored in the boughs which are mirrored in the twigs. (This video from 2017 is based on 750 million iterations of the Mandelbrot set.)įractals are found throughout nature. What makes it all the more incredible is its fractal quality, the shape of the whole repeating no matter how deep you plunge into the details. The image is striking enough when seen from above. Using the latest technology (he worked for IBM), in 1980 he ran a simple equation through a computer millions of times, then plotted the results on a graph, creating a now iconic image: the Mandelbrot set. Mandelbrot demonstrated that complex structures can arise from the application of simple rules iterated over and over again. The term “fractal” was coined in 1975 by the maverick mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot to describe shapes that are self-similar at many different scales, with patterns that repeat many times over. World-mirrors, Gandhi called us fractals, someone might say today, reflecting the whole while forming the whole. What’s more interesting and just as true is that everyone is changing the world, whether we intend to or not, we can’t help it. The claim that one person can change the world is too platitudinous for me to hear well, while also being undeniably true (see: “Gandhi, Mohandas”). If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change… We need not wait to see what others do.” All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. More reliable still is this passage from a 1913 article by Gandhi in the Indian Opinion newspaper: “We but mirror the world. ![]() It’s bad for your health.” The mother was confused: “Why didn’t you say that two weeks ago?” The Mahatma answered, “Because two weeks ago I was eating sugar myself.” When they returned, Gandhi said to the boy, “You should stop eating sugar. Will you advise him to stop eating it?” The teacher looked for a moment at the mother and son, then told them to come back in two weeks. “My son eats too much sugar,” she told Gandhi. There is a story-also apocryphal?-about a woman who brought her son to Gandhi. ![]() While Gandhi isn’t the source of “Be the change.,” I think it stuck because it sounds like the kind of thing he would say. No word yet on whether bumper sticker companies plan to issue a recall. Lorrance tells the origin story of the quote in this podcast interview she also talks about what it’s like to be misattributed to one of history’s great spiritual teachers and leaders. After a violent fight between two students, Lorrance and her colleagues created the Love Project, one principle of which was to “be the change you want to see happen.” Lorrance wrote about the school’s subsequent transformation in her 1972 book The Love Project, with excerpts later republished in college textbooks. The quote dates back to the 1970s, borne out of an especially difficult teaching experience at a troubled Brooklyn high school. Gandhi didn’t actually say, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Credit for that goes to Arleen Lorrance, an educator who lives in Scottsdale.
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